#eu-mercosur-trade

#eu-mercosur-trade

But what is legally possible could pose a serious political problem. Because, as the European Commission pointed out when remarking on the Parliament's negative vote, the legal formula used to process the ratification of this agreement is the same one used for an agreement reached with Chile that did not raise any questions inside the European Parliament. In other words, the outcome of this vote suggests that the opposition for legal concerns is motivated less by legal reasons than by political ones.

It's one step forward, one step back in Europe's relations with the US. Just hours after the Coalition of the Willing made a big step towards providing Ukraine with long-awaited security guarantees with potential UK and French troops deployments and all briefly seemed to be going in the right direction once again, the White House said that using US military is always an option for acquiring Greenland.

The European Commission took the first step on Wednesday to ratify a long-awaited free-trade package with Latin American countries: an agreement with Mexico, and, crucially, one with members of the Mercosur trading bloc. The EU spent over 25 years negotiating the deal with Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, the four founding members of the Southern Common Market, or Mercosur. Bolivia, which joined the group only last year, and Venezuela, whose membership has been suspended, are not included in the deal.